After the dust settled, the buzzer had finished buzzing and those final trades that trickle in after the deadline finally dried up, Arizona Coyotes general manager Don Maloney admitted it was good to be done with the process. The trade deadline is a stressful time for a club; it’s intense.

It was a ton of work, and now the next couple of months for the Coyotes -- well, they could be miserable.

“I think you’re being kind," Maloney said jokingly.

It’s not going to be easy winning games without Antoine Vermette and Keith Yandle. Things weren’t going particularly well when they were around, after all.

But during the course of the weekend and through Monday’s deadline day, no team did more to improve its outlook than the Coyotes. It was dramatic, and the rebuild in Arizona was absolutely fast-tracked.

“You always hope so, No. 1,” Maloney said Monday evening. “It may depend on how this draft goes and where we end up drafting. Obviously, if we draft very high in the top couple slots, that’s when you can really jump-start this reset.”

Even if they don’t, the Coyotes loaded up on picks and prospects to join an organization that already has good young players coming, and a franchise defenseman in Oliver Ekman-Larsson.

Add Connor McDavid to Max Domi, Anthony Duclair, Maxim Letunov, Brendan Perlini and Henrik Samuelsson, and this won’t be a five-year process. It may not be a two-year process. In all, the Coyotes added Letunov, Duclair, John Moore, a 2015 first-round pick, 2016 first-round pick, 2015 second-round pick and already had an extra third-rounder from the Devan Dubnyk trade with the Wild.

The deadline is usually about the contending teams loading up to win a Stanley Cup. That’s usually the focus. But the Coyotes won the deadline. It might not have even been all that close.

Here’s how the rest of the teams rank in their performance during the last few weeks of the trade season, and for those who missed any of my trade grades, click here.

With the addition of Michalek, the Blues may have the deepest defense in the NHL if everybody is healthy. That’s the big if. Michalek is recovering from a concussion and, according to an NHL source, he’s closing in on returning. But that came with a caveat, which is, you never know with a concussion.

I love the thought process here for the Bruins. Rather than using draft picks for a rental player, they get a guy in Brett Connolly who still has upside, and can be a part of the long-term plan. The strategy is impeccable. The young player they picked is debatable.

Tampa Bay GM Steve Yzerman can pull this trade off because he has done a fantastic job stockpiling draft picks and prospects. The Lightning have the organizational depth to go big. Still, this is a serious price to pay for Coburn.

Leon Halip/Getty ImagesHow many of these players will remain Maple Leafs after Monday's deadline?

In the middle of Sunday’s action, when picks were flying back and forth and everyone was still trying to figure out exactly what the price was for Keith Yandle, an Eastern Conference executive stopped to assess the situation.

“I think some of the prices that have been paid, for the players who have been acquired, are insane,” he said.

Maybe it was frustration talking, but it wasn’t exactly inaccurate.

The price of doing business is high. While you were sleeping, the Lightning sent a package that included a first- and third-round pick to the Flyers for Braydon Coburn. The Lightning could do it because GM Steve Yzerman has built up a wealth of good young players and extra draft picks with smart management.

Detroit Red Wings: B
The Red Wings are averaging 2.9 goals per game, which is No. 7 in the NHL. But they’re a little reliant on a power play that is No. 1 in the league, and that’s a hard way to win in the playoffs where power plays can dry up quickly. At even strength, the Red Wings average just 2.07 goals per 60 minutes, a total that is No. 23 in the league.

Give the Rangers credit on multiple fronts. The Eastern Conference is wide open and they got an impact defenseman who can be a game-changer. There are few defensemen in the league who teams have to game plan for, and always know where they are on the ice at all moments. Yandle, like P.K. Subban and Erik Karlsson, is one of those players. This deal is fantastic in the now.The Rangers have a better chance of winning a championship now than before this trade.
The other consideration is this: If you ever were going to trade Anthony Duclair, now is the time. He was a guy whom the Rangers bought low on in the third round of the draft and sold high on after he had an incredible World Junior Championship for Team Canada.

Washington was interested in both Glencross and Erik Cole, and opted to go with the veteran Flames forward in their attempt to give the group more depth. According to an NHL source, they didn’t have any conversations with the Sabres about Chris Stewart, another available winger.

GM Stan Bowman took full advantage of the additional cap space created by Patrick Kane's injury in adding Kimmo Timonen and Antoine Vermette, with Vermette the best rental forward on the market. He’s the kind of veteran Joel Quenneville will absolutely love.

Flyers get: Blackhawks' second-round pick in 2015, conditional fourth-round pick in 2016. If the Blackhawks win two rounds in the playoffs and Timonen plays in 50 percent of the games, the pick becomes a third-rounder in 2016. If Chicago wins three rounds and he plays in 50 percent of the games, it becomes a second-rounder in 2016.

This is high risk, high reward for Chicago. It has the potential to pay off in a big way, in that they’re getting a veteran defenseman who was a legitimate, top-pairing defenseman the past season -- at 38 years old.

AP Photo/Chris SzagolaThe Buffalo Sabres will be a fascinating team to watch this summer.

Buffalo Sabres GM Tim Murray is in full sell mode right now. While he hasn’t ruled out another deal like the Evander Kane trade, he set the odds at 80 percent that he'll sell his rentals compared to 20 percent that he'll make a pure hockey trade before the deadline.

“I don’t foresee a hockey trade, but then again, I didn’t foresee the Winnipeg trade until we did it,” Murray said when we chatted this week.

The interesting question for the Sabres is -- what happens next? At some point the selling ends and the building begins in earnest.

Columbus Blue Jackets: AStick with me here. The huge cheers from Maple Leafs fans as they carried David Clarkson and his $5.25 million salary-cap hit out of town suggests that the Blue Jackets got ripped off in some form for making this deal.

Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesAntoine Vermette is among the best remaining "rental" options on the trade market.

And just like that, the rental trade market has thinned out considerably.

On Tuesday, the trade for Sean Bergenheim helped set the price for a rental, with the Florida Panthers getting a third-round pick while shipping a seventh-rounder to the Minnesota Wild along with the forward, who had asked out.

The other general managers took that bit of information on Wednesday and ran with it.

“I think the Bergenheim price motivated some sellers to take what they can get. That was not a great price if you’re a seller,” one Eastern Conference executive said. “The value -- I don’t think it was anywhere near what people were saying the market was going to be.”

That said, the price the Pittsburgh Penguins paid for Daniel Winnik was high, in part because he was one of the few rentals they could squeeze under the cap. And the Los Angeles Kings paid a nice ransom for Andrej Sekera, but get the double benefit of adding the best available rental defenseman and preventing him from going to Chicago.

SPONSORED HEADLINES

ABOUT THIS BLOG

Craig Custance

Craig Custance joined ESPN in September 2011 as an NHL reporter for ESPN the Magazine, ESPN Insider and ESPN.com. A graduate of Michigan State University, he lived for nearly a decade in Georgia working for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution where he spent time covering the late Atlanta Thrashers. He was the only Thrashers beat writer to get the team to the playoffs.

From 2008-11 he was the national hockey writer for the Sporting News, writing regularly in print and online. A member of the PHWA, he's a proud voter for the major NHL awards and can occasionally defend his selections.

Like hockey, he left Atlanta to return north where he currently lives in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, with his wife Cassie and their three kids.